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Show Pres. Eisenhower Gets 50 Millionth Phone The United States now has 50,000,000 telephones in service, nearly one for each three persons, per-sons, Axel Birch, manager for the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company, said here today. At a ceremony held in the White House recently, President Dwight D. Eisenhower Eisenhow-er received the milestone telephone. tele-phone. "The significance of this achievement," Mr. Birch said, "cannot be measured in the number of telephones alone. Probably more important is what this vast network means to' our country and its people By bringing individuals and the nation together into a better informed and more closely knit unit, the telephone has played an important part in preserving and advancing the American way of life. It stands ready day or night enabling friends to chat, or to summon aid in any emergency. It joins together the far flung links of our country's chain of defense. It materially contributes in making us the world's greatest industrial na tion. News and. knowledge, es- sentials in our democracy, flow uninhibited over telephone lines to channels that use the written and spoken word, the still or living news picture." Telephone service has grown from its humblle beginning in 1876 to an essential part of the life of the community. Few, if any, inventions have meant so much to so many people. In no other country in the world has the telephone been developed so well as to make it available to practically all the people. Through the resourcefulness of the private enterprise of more than 5,300 telephone companies in the United States, the telephone tele-phone has become available to just about everybody at a price which is well within the reach of all. Mr. Birch said that much of the tremendous growth in telephone tele-phone service has come since the end of World War II. In 1946 the 30,000,000th telephone was placed in service, seventy years after the telephone was invented. The additional 20 million have been connected in the seven years since then, and r represent an increase of more than 66 per cent. The rapid growth experienced exper-ienced throughout the country coun-try has been even more pronounced pro-nounced here in Roosevelt. In 1946 there were 327 telephones tele-phones here. Today, there are 849 telephones serving the city, which is an increase of more than 226 per cent. On an average day these telephones tele-phones are used more than 62000 times. "The more than 200 telephone companies which serve the Rocky Mountain Empire can be justly proud of their contribution contribu-tion to the country's communications communi-cations network," Mr. Birch said. "Operating as they do over the vast expanses of the nation's more thinly populated area has presented problems not experienced in the country's densely populated areas. Their contribution toward National Defense has been great, since some of our nation's most important im-portant defense projects fall within this area." |
